Amy Tan

Advantages: Great historical fact
Disadvantages: Slow to start and quick ending

...and disappointing for me. I wanted it to be faster and at the end I just wanted more story. Overall a good read and one that has made me want to look up more of Amy Tan's books for my summer holiday reading.... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: Beautifully told, interesting, powerful
Disadvantages: Can be distressing

...I have read all of Amy Tan's books and loved them each in turn, The Kitchen God's Wife being my favourite. This one goes back to the familiar interweaving of the stories of a mother and daughter: the daughter's sometimes petty, sometimes heartbreaking worries about relationships, work, love and most importantly family, interjected by a tragic but beautiful, often lyrically told story of the mother's past. The reason for the title of my op is that this one is considerably darker, blunter and more personal than any that have come before. The Bonesetter's Daughter tells the story of Ruth Young, a ghostwriter, who worries that her rather intractable mother, LuLing is developing Alzheimer's. It forces her to analyse her odd relationship with her mother, who has started to write her memories of her upbringing in the China of the 1930s... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Uncovering secrets in Chinese American family
Disadvantages: Basic knowledge of C20th China useful

...Amy Tan already had a best seller with The Joy Luck Club when this was published in the UK in 1991, but I came to her as an unknown author. I discovered a lot about Chinese culture and customs, and was gripped by the story of a woman who migrated to America to escape a violent marriage. The book opens as Pearl takes her young family to visit her mother in the family home in San Jose, California, for the Buddhist funeral of Great Auntie Du. Then the story moves to Kunming in central China during the civil war and World War II, prior to the communist revolution, when women had little freedom. Winnie Louie - Jiang Weili as she was before she married Pearl's father - reveals the true story of the friendships and marrieag in her previous life in pre-revolution China. Both Great Auntie Du and her friend Helen Kwong had been... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful